Google should allow us to click on ads...

running on our sites

[dmz17]

Google should allow us as webmasters to click on AdSense ads running on our sites without fault *and* without compensation. This solves problems and has several benefits:

1. well meaning AdSense members won't have to worry about "unintended" clicks.

2. ill meaning AdSense members won't make money clicking on their own ads.

3. AdSense members building legitimate content are probably interested in the products advertised on their sites and being able to visit those ads would be a benefit to the advertisers who wouldn't be charged for those visits.

There's a distinction between us as webmasters visiting ads on our sites (whether by mistake or out of interest in what's advertised) and the fraudulent activity of those pretending to be a third party/member of the public clicking on ads. I think it would be a win all around if Google made this distinction in its policies.

All Google has to do to implement this is discount clicks from computers with an AdSense login cookie present (or allow us to explicitly declare IP numbers that covers our machines).

What do folks think?

[kevinpate]

Not that you would fail to declare ALL ofyour relevant IP numbers, but I suspect there's enough peeps out there who would try exactly that scam.

[Jesse_Smith]

Any AOL user to agree with this idea would have to be on crack! Any Compuserver user to agree with this idea would have to be on crack. Any.....

No, it's not a good idea!

[dmz17]

Kevin, IPs you don't declare would be subject to the same current fraud policing/penalties. So I'm not sure how people would be additionally scamming this.

Jesse_Smith, why would AOL/Compuserve users be on crack?

I'm suggesting that Google uses your login cookie as the primary indicator of a machine being yours. The declaring IPs would be optional and you might make use of it if say you are in an office environment with fixed IPs and you want to make sure that co-workers don't harm your account by clicking on ads at work.

[europeforvisitors]

This is just a guess, but maybe Google feels that publishers should focus on their content instead of monitoring Google's advertisers.

[camper]

A bad idea, for obvious reasons.

[david_uk]

Adsense provide the preview tool so that you *can* click on ads without it registering as a click. It works on both Adsense content and Adsense search. It also enables you to see who is advertising on your site from outside your geographic region.

[kodaks]

Another way you can preview, is by clicking on "Ads By Gooooogle", and then it lists all the URLs with no Adsense tracking.

[Sunflux]

Why do people keep saying "click on Ads by Google"? That is NOT the solution. It does NOT show you the actual URL the ad is going to. The "base" URL shown there (and at the bottom of the ad on most formats) often has absolutely NOTHING to do with where the ad actually leads.

For example, I dare you to find a single ebay ad that goes to directly ebay.com.

A better solution is to use the AdSense Preview Tool. Although it usually doesn't show the ads in the same order, those ads you CAN click on and they DO go to the real URL.

[larryhatch]

Suppose a genuine site visitor likes your pages, and clicks on an ad repeatedly
because he/she is double-checking other vendors etc.?

How will GG distinguish this from outright fraud?

[Jesse_Smith]

Jesse_Smith, why would AOL/Compuserve users be on crack?

You would have to be on crack to want to ban millions of internet users from clicking on your ads....

(or allow us to explicitly declare IP numbers that covers our machines).

Many peoples IP address changes as the 4th number so you would have to take the 4th number off, causing a lot of ISP computers to be banned.

[Macro]

Going by the threads we've had here since Adsense started it's obvious it's not just one or two people who try to scam the system.

A little bit of paranoia keeps some of the less honest webmasters at bay... and may be to every honest webmaster's advantage.

[balour]

Take a look at the Adsense Preview Tool in the help section of Google Adsense. This will solve your "ethic" problem.

[dmz17]

Last I checked, the AdSense preview tool doesn't run on all operating systems, so it's not a general solution.

Our site's content is managed (added, edited, etc.) online via web forms and not by local editing and ftp upload. That means we are on our site for hours on end with multiple windows open, etc. The probability of accidental clicks on our ads is there despite our greatest paranoia (happened twice and we reported it).

The reason I would want IP declaration as an option in addition to the login cookie is to cover our employees at work who don't have login access/cookie. Though instructed to not click on AdSense ads they may be less paranoid than I, the account holder.

I think most webmasters know whether or not their IPs are fixed and would make use of such an option or not accordingly.